Back to the Tundra

We'll I've got some time to kill here before I head off to the airport, but not enough to go back to sleep. I had yo get up early and take Dan to the airport, but since I don't fly out until 10 Cali time, I've got some moments to burn. Just spoke to some residents of the mid-west on the phone and it seems I'll be receiving a nice slap in the face when I step off the plane in Indy tonight. Word is they got 4-5in of snow in Bloomington last night, and there could be at least that much coming again tonight. Hopefully not.

My trip out here served its purpose nicely, allowing me to get a nice block of training in with no distractions and decent weather. I wasn't able to work on my tan at all because it was just cold enough to need legwarmers, armwarmers, a vest and cycling cap. Just the right temperature to faux pro it up and show off how much matching kit you have. Yesterday Dan and I headed down to Oceanside to ride the PCH (or Pacific Coast Highway for you non-Cali bra's) in search of some of those famous California sun rays and some slightly more level roads. Also with the hopes of a Phil The Pro sighting.



Well, no Phil "Gainon" or Phil Gaimon sightings, but the ride was pretty excellent anyway. I was however left with a slightly sour taste in my mouth because of the number of "Race Faces" I got from the 38 year old triathletes in their aero bars slaughtering it at 17 mph. Why is it so hard to respond to another cyclist when he waves at you? Anyway, I could go on about that issue for a while, especially in Bloomington... We'll my minutes here are growing few, so I gotta get going. Racin' starts soon.

Training Trip

I've been out here in California since late Thursday afternoon. The riding has been awesome so far, but the weather has been sub-par for California. After a few hour lay over in Vegas we got into Redlands with only a bit of daylight left, so Dan and I quickly put the bikes together and did a quick hour around Redlands, and I showed him the damn TT course from the Redlands Cycling Classic. It's still a bitch even after being away for almost a year. I'm still on Eastern time, so I've been fighting to stay up until 9 out here and waking up at like 7 every morning. Yesterday Dan and I were feeling ambitious so we headed up the mountain towards Big Bear Lake, with the plan being a loop of the lake, then coming back the way we came. Google Earth didn't do the extremeness of this route justice. Redlands sits at about 1000ft above sea level and we managed to see this sign along the way up.



It was raining too hard once we got to Onyx Summit (just under 9k) to take a picture. I'm guessing we did between 11 and 12 thousand ft of climbing on the day. And literally climbed for all of the first 3 hours of the ride. This was the first time I've ever been exposed to exercise at elevation, and around 7k ft it got noticably harder to get decent breaths of air, it was actually kinda cool. We turned around after 3.5 hours and started the plunge back down. It poured on us the whole time. There were points where we couldn't see more than 50ft up the road. It was in the 30's at that elevation, so our bare and wet hands could barely pull the brake levers. We got back to Redlands with a ride time of 5:15 and the temp were back in the 60's. I know people in the cycling community use the word epic a lot, but this ride was seriously epic.



Today we did another long one and my legs were feeling yesterdays efforts for sure. I don't want to power dork out on you guys too hard, but at 142 lbs, I rarely see these kind of Kilojoules. 8500kj's in the last two days, so I think we're gonna take it a bit easier tomorrow.



My teammate Dan Campbell has been smashing me on the climbs out here. He's on some pretty solid form right now. Things are looking good for the team this year. I've got the compression socks on and it's time for me to go eat some recovery Oreo's. I'll try to get some mo' photos once the weather gets decent enough to get the camera out of the plastic bag.

New Kit

So those are the threads we'll be rockin' this season.

Here is a bit more info on the team page

Ryder Hesjdal Video

Here's a link to a cool video of Ryder Hesjdal trying to break Vaughters reacord up Haleakala. The mountain goes from sea level to just over 10,000 ft in 57k. JV's record was 2hrs 38min in 1993. At the end of the video they give Ryder's stats for the climb and his power numbers. Pretty cool, if you're into that kind of thing.

Ryder Record Attmept Video


Click the HERE for the info from his Garmin during the ride.

Blog Revival

Hello out there. Sorry for a bit of a dry spell in the updates, I don't really know what I've been up to, but I guess it didn't involve maintaining the blog. New Years has come and gone, and this year I ended up ringing in the New Year in St. Louis at Laurens place with some of her family and friends. I took my bike but didn't touch it for the 3 days that I was there. That's one of the nice things about starting up the training a little earlier this year, I don't have to ride every single day if I don't feel like it and I can just let the miles come as the motivation does. That being said, I'm officially motivated. Last weekend I tried to get a ride on the rollers in one evening and I got all of 32 minutes in before that was all I could take. So I decided I was riding outside, rain or shine, above freezing, or not. Well this week has been a nice test for how bad I really do hate the rollers. I bought a fender and some lights and have been putting in some solid outdoor hours even though the temperature has seldom been above freezing. Yeah, it sucks when it's snowing and a 30 mph wind in your face, but when you're done it feels pretty good to have fought the weather and won. Plus, I can't seem to feel like I'm ever getting any fitness out of the rollers, so I'm burning those mothers down.

I've got a nice little training trip planned for Southern California in 2 weeks to look forward to as well. My new teammate Dan Campbell and I are heading out to Redlands for a week to stay with my host family from the race last year, and slay some climbs in the meantime. Hopefully that will get my fitness moving a little bit, compared to last year where I was still off the bike at the end of Jan. Plus my tan is really suffering. This might be the first time I have lost my tan line from my high socks... gotta fix that. Also, word is that the team frames are in and the rest of the components are on the way as well, so that will be nice to get a hold of. I don't think we'll be getting our hands on those for another few weeks until we have our team get together.

Just heard yesterday that Tri-Peaks/ Tour of Arkansas isn't happening this year. That really sucks. I think that may have been my favorite race of last season. It also leaves a hole in my schedule. Oh well, I'm sure something will pop up.

Sorry for a picture-less update. The only pictured I had that I wanted to share was the picture of Stuart O'Grady from the Bay Crits racing with a saddle bag. He's so pro he's all the way back around to the other end of the not pro spectrum.